I looked at my racemates blogs to see if they had written blogs on their personal testimonies. And I tell you, you better be careful what you ask for because at 8:45am yesterday morning God had wrecked me. I read other blogs, and to be honest I didn’t find that many who wrote out their entire testimony and that is completely okay! But there were things that I read from their different blogs that really touched my spirit and revealed to me things that I didn’t realize about myself. Like how I am a lukewarm Christian. Even typing those words are hard but I have to be as honest and real now as it felt in that moment. When I say lukewarm, I mean I had one foot in and one out. I believe and trust God with all my heart, but I was still allowing fear to stop me from doing what God wanted me to do. I don’t like anything lukewarm that includes my food, coffee and myself. So, I have to make a choice, one that shouldn’t be as dramatic as I believe I am making but I guess it feels that way because of fear. I always heard that our testimonies aren’t even completely for us. It is for the people who hear it, and I understand that because it was through a girl I met in college, her testimony that changed everything for me.
Everyone has a chain. Something that ties to them, be it their past or their current that holds them down in some ways or makes them feel unsure of who they are in God’s eyes. For me, my chain was masturbation. It was something that felt good in the moment but afterwards left me feeling ashamed. I thought to myself many times how God could love me when I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. There are so many views on masturbation. Some woman sees it as a liberating, and a natural apart of life. I saw it that way too, but I continuously asked myself: then why did I feel so bad? I felt like everyone saw me as perfect, but I has having this inner battle that no one saw. When I got to college my freshman year I heard about and joined a on campus woman’s bible study organization called Pinky Promise. I really loved it because it was young Christian woman getting together to talk about how to be a light and be different on a college campus when there are so many worldly temptations. One particular night we started a series on Lust. What the bible says about it, how it got so many characters in the bible in trouble, as well as how to identify and beat it in real day. One of our presidents at the time opened up to us and was very transparent about her struggle with lust, and how like me, she had a struggle with masturbation. And when I say “struggle,” I mean an internal battle between what the flesh wants vs what God wants for his daughters. When she shared her experience and talked to us on how God see’s women; how were one of his most prized possessions that he adores, and that he wants more for us. It was the first time that I ever heard anyone really talk about it from a Christian woman’s perspective because I realize how taboo unfortunately the topic is in churches today. But when you know better you have the responsibility to do better. I knew that that bible study was for me, to fully open my eyes and now hold me accountable for what I did next. I remember it like it was yesterday, it was that Sunday after the bible study that I opened up a spiral black notebook I had, opened my bible app, picked a scripture and started writing. I didn’t write anything fancy, just the scripture and what I got from it, what it meant to me and questions I still might have had. I did this every day, in the same black notebook until one day about a month later I looked up and realized that lustful desire that I had, had completely gone away! Some might have expected me to say that I did some long prayer with bible verses and spoke in tongues and that lead to deliverance, but all I did was open my bible and a notebook. In that moment of realization, I fell in love with God. He took away the very thing that had me chained up with shame, and the thoughts of not being able to be loved by Him. My life has changed so much over the last 5 years with me learning who I am in Christ and wanting to dive deeper and deeper into my relationship with Him. I’m not stupid I know the devil hates that he no longer has me and will try to put road blocks in my path to try to trip me up. Since I know that, I’m more aware to the things I watch, the things I read, and listen to because it all feeds into your spirit. I said earlier that a person’s testimony is half for them and half for someone else. I don’t know who this is for, but I just want to say that God loves you! You are so precious to him and he hurts when you hurt, and smiles when you smile. He is always there, just waiting for people to come to him willing because he is not a God that will ever force you to do anything. If you need deliverance from anything that you feel is holding you down all you have to do if make yourself available to God. Pray to him, open the bible to learn more about him and I can promise that he will meet you exactly where you are!
